Telkom downgraded UMC cards in the western cape

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-ariOn-

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Hi all

I was wondering if anyone has heard about how telkom downgraded their UMC cards in most of their DSLAM boxes.
I was having problems with my internet (ping story), and the telkom guy tried to sort it out but couldnt because head office downgraded the cards most of durbanville, bellville and other western cape areas. so if lets say if 10 people were connected to one box and they all had 4mb lines, that means they would need a 40mb card (atleast) in the box, but apparently this is costly for telkom so they downgrade the dslam boxes and leave those 10 people with a 10mb card for example, meaning if all 10 people went on the internet at once their internet would suffer (unstable and high pings, slow downloads etc), essentially "flatlining" - thats the word he used. I dont want to get the telkom guy in trouble so I wont say who he is, but he said he wasn't supposed to tell me this and that its a big issue inside telkom as who is to blame for this mistake.

Can anyone confirm this? or maybe find more info and make it public, because if its true, then alot of people are getting screwed by telkom.
 
Sorry to say but I call BS on this one.

Here is a link that explain how a DSLAM works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Subscriber_Line_Access_Multiplexer

Now what you will find is, a whole DSLAM is oversubscribed, ie., it will have a STM-0 uplink (or rather it will be called a ATM link) to the BRAS, a STM-0 can handle about 48Mbit/sec. Telkom will have 20 4Mbps clients on this, and as you mentioned if they all use it at the same time, it gets oversubscribed.

Now I highly doubt Telkom downgraded their equipment, rather what happened is, they had 10 384Kbps clients on that DSLAM, all 10 upgraded to 4Mbps as time goes by, but while the clients upgraded their lines, Telkom didn't upgrade the uplink from ATM to MetroEthernet, which can be any variation of STM-1 to STM-64, my guess is they need to upgrade it to either STM-1 or STM-4 links, because their DSLAMs don't have enough people on for bigger than that.

Basically, Telkom just aint upgrading the equipment to keep up with the demand of consumers. You will also find, sometimes a newer DSLAM was installed, but to get your line moved over to it is a bigger mission than you can imagine.
 
Tinuva said:
Sorry to say but I call BS on this one.

Here is a link that explain how a DSLAM works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Subscriber_Line_Access_Multiplexer

Now what you will find is, a whole DSLAM is oversubscribed, ie., it will have a STM-0 uplink (or rather it will be called a ATM link) to the BRAS, a STM-0 can handle about 48Mbit/sec. Telkom will have 20 4Mbps clients on this, and as you mentioned if they all use it at the same time, it gets oversubscribed.

Now I highly doubt Telkom downgraded their equipment, rather what happened is, they had 10 384Kbps clients on that DSLAM, all 10 upgraded to 4Mbps as time goes by, but while the clients upgraded their lines, Telkom didn't upgrade the uplink from ATM to MetroEthernet, which can be any variation of STM-1 to STM-64, my guess is they need to upgrade it to either STM-1 or STM-4 links, because their DSLAMs don't have enough people on for bigger than that.

Basically, Telkom just aint upgrading the equipment to keep up with the demand of consumers. You will also find, sometimes a newer DSLAM was installed, but to get your line moved over to it is a bigger mission than you can imagine.
Click to expand...

I get what you're saying, but then why would telkom initiate an upgrade to 10 mbps if they cant handle it? (greed?), and why then do they have plans of a 40 mbps infrastructure if they cant even handle 4mbps per customer?
 
-ariOn- said:
I get what you're saying, but then why would telkom initiate an upgrade to 10 mbps if they cant handle it? (greed?), and why then do they have plans of a 40 mbps infrastructure if they cant even handle 4mbps per customer?
Click to expand...
It's probably a mindset similar to an airline overselling the available seats - hoping that the no shows will reduce the bookings down to the number of available seats.
 
-ariOn- said:
I get what you're saying, but then why would telkom initiate an upgrade to 10 mbps if they cant handle it? (greed?),
Click to expand...

Obviously. Ripping us with double line rental just isn't enough anymore.
 
Its just that their planning is behind the demand ( planned for 30 ADSL lines but the demand is 60 so they installed 60 so u get congestion ) but the demand will trigger an upgrade the problem is when will they upgrade
 
It's total BS.

Bellville/Durbanville is part of the pilot 20/40Mbps project where they are installing MSAN's every kilometer or so apart. These are connected via optic fibre cable back to the Bellville exchange.

All the current UMCs will be replaced in their entirety. With that in mind why on earth would they want to even send techies to work on the UMC's?
 
MickeyD said:
It's total BS.

Bellville/Durbanville is part of the pilot 20/40Mbps project where they are installing MSAN's every kilometer or so apart. These are connected via optic fibre cable back to the Bellville exchange.

All the current UMCs will be replaced in their entirety. With that in mind why on earth would they want to even send techies to work on the UMC's?
Click to expand...

Could this explain the shocking slowdown of ADSL2+ exchange upgrades? We get one every 10 days now.

I sure hope they do this city-wide... The thing is I wouldn't mind having Telkom as my ISP, it's just that they don't offer good enough products. IPTV and 40mb internet would certainly convince me :/
 
Im in durbanville and my ping is terrible today :

Tracing route to saix.net [196.25.1.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 96 ms 115 ms 117 ms dsl-240-220-01.telkomadsl.co.za [41.240.220.1]
2 107 ms 117 ms 174 ms wblv-ip-essr-1-atm-2-0-0-2.telkom-ipnet.co.za [1
96.43.11.30]
3 163 ms 116 ms 118 ms wblv-ip-www-1.saix.net [196.25.1.200]

Trace complete.

tracert saix.net

Tracing route to saix.net [196.25.1.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 171 ms 115 ms 115 ms dsl-240-220-01.telkomadsl.co.za [41.240.220.1]
2 93 ms 117 ms 114 ms wblv-ip-essr-1-atm-2-0-0-2.telkom-ipnet.co.za [1
96.43.11.30]
3 102 ms 173 ms 116 ms wblv-ip-www-1.saix.net [196.25.1.200]
 
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